Pinterest for Energy Efficiency

I've been experimenting with Pinterest for a few weeks, and am increasingly falling in love with it. While many consider it to be primarily the realm of gorgeous imagery, recipes and pretty consumer products, I'm finding the concept of "pinning"--the online version of scrapbooking--to be really valuable.

In particular, one of my passions is for Energy Information Design and Pinterest has become the perfect tool for accumulating interesting approaches in one easy place.

What's been quite amazing to me is that my board, Energy Information Design, is now #1 Google organic for that search term. (A little obscure, perhaps, but not really.)

To me, it's not only a great way to post and disseminate images, but it's also another great SEO opportunity. For example, whenever I publish a new blog posting, I first use the usual channels to publicize it: FB, Twitter, and Google Plus. Then, over the course of the next few days, I'll periodically pin an image from my blog post (which, of course, contains a back-link to my posting), and I'll tweet the pin, at the same time. I've found that this keeps interest up without inundating folks with the same boring old tweet about my recent blog post.

Often, twitter followers who might otherwise ignore a tweet comprised of just text and a shortened link seem to show much more interest in a tweeted Pinterest image, and will retweet or even re-pin it.

The pinned images on my boards also get picked up by folks on Pinterest who otherwise would have no knowledge of my blog or twitter stream. Not that all these folks are necessarily in my target audience, but all readers are welcomed, and I think as Pinterest gains in popularity, more of my target audience will eventually get there. Bottom line is: I think Pinterest is a great resource, and we ought to put it to good use and promote it as much as possible. Your Energy Information Design board is a great example of the value Pinterest can provide to the home performance community.

There is a lot of interest on Pinterest in energy efficient homes. A keyword search on energy efficient home brings up lots of links to great articles. Some of the photos link to case studies. Check them out!